


in the wake of a hurricane, dark skin of a summer shade

by maangoes



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Argentina, Established Relationship, Injury (not serious), M/M, Post-Timeskip, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:09:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27751327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maangoes/pseuds/maangoes
Summary: It takes him a moment to calculate the time difference, then frown, because Iwaizumi should be taking a final right now. He taps the green button to answer.“Iwa-chan?” he asks, voice hedged with reluctant concern. “Are you okay?”“No,” Iwaizumi grunts. “How many fucking stories up is your apartment?”Or, Iwaizumi Hajime (19) visits Oikawa in Argentina.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 8
Kudos: 220





	in the wake of a hurricane, dark skin of a summer shade

The phone rings for the first time in two weeks and Oikawa knows who it is right away, because nobody else calls him — not without warning him first.

It takes him a moment to dig his phone out from between the couch cushions. The half-melted ice pack balanced precariously on his ankle falls to the ground with a wet noise. The room is unbearably hot and frustration swells in his chest, sudden and irrational.

Oikawa holds his phone up to the light. The photo he put as the contact picture is one that a lover would take: Iwaizumi sleeping on his stomach, head tucked into the fold of his arms, cheek pressed against his pillow. The sheets are pulled halfway up his back, his bare arms and shoulders dappled with sunlight. Oikawa likes it for how peaceful he looks, for the sleep-messy spikes of his hair and the spot of dried drool at the corner of his mouth. 

It takes him a moment to calculate the time difference, then frown, because Iwaizumi should be taking a final right now. He taps the green button to answer.

“Iwa-chan?” he asks, voice hedged with reluctant concern. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Iwaizumi grunts. “How many fucking stories up is your apartment?” 

“What?” Oikawa asks, frown deepening.

“This is taking longer than the flight, Jesus—“

“What?” Oikawa repeats, because hope is rising in him quick and fast, threatening to choke him if he doesn’t get a real answer soon.

“Thirty-one, right?” he asks, and Oikawa can _hear_ his stupid old man grunting filtering in through the open window, can _see_ his shoulder where the breeze lifts the edge of the curtain.

Oikawa is on his feet too fast, limping the short distance to the door and hauling it open before Iwaizumi can knock twice.

He’s _here_.

“Hey,” Iwaizumi says, like this is normal. He’s wearing an Irvine t-shirt and he has a pair of cheap sunglasses perched on his head. He looks handsome in a rumpled, just got off a 12 hour international flight kind of way.

Without fanfare, he drops his duffel at Oikawa’s feet and crouches down, hands going to the ace bandage around Oikawa’s ankle. Oikawa’s heart thuds a little harder at the press of Iwaizumi’s fingers against his calf, then the sensitive dip at the back of his knee. “Does it hurt right now?”

Oikawa blinks down at him. “You have exams,” he reminds, like Iwaizumi might have forgotten.

Iwaizumi shrugs, still poking around his ankle. His thumb skims lightly over the bruising. “I figured it out.”

“What does that mean?” Oikawa folds his arms. “Did you _skip_ exams?”

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes and spares Oikawa a long-suffering glance. “No. I took one early, one was a final project due last week, the other two are essays.”

“Early?” Oikawa presses. 

“The TA is our libero, I called in a favor.”

 _For me?_ Oikawa wants to ask, even though the answer could not be more obvious. He wastes a moment feeling childish.

Iwaizumi rises up off the floor, dusting sand off his shorts. He’s very close and he smells like the same stupid, cheap aftershave he’s been using since they were fifteen. “You should sit down,” Iwaizumi says, wary.

Oikawa steps forward into the hug he feels he’s owed, chin hooked over Iwaizumi’s shoulder. Iwaizumi’s arms come up around him immediately, palms pressed flat against his back. To his mortification, Oikawa feels tears prick behind his eyes, a sob climbing cautiously up his throat. Almost as if he can sense it, Iwaizumi grips him tighter. 

It takes a moment to stave off the threat of crying completely. Oikawa stands completely still, letting Iwaizumi all but hold him up in the doorway.

“How did you know?” he asks, finally.

“Your mom called.”

“Hm,” Oikawa sniffles, fingers curling into the soft fabric of Iwaizumi’s t-shirt. “You two as friends is really annoying.”

* * *

The first time he landed a jump wrong, the sour pain of it shooting all the way up his leg, he threw a frantic look at Iwaizumi through the net, only to find him already looking back. Iwaizumi raised an eyebrow — okay? — and Oikawa held his gaze until the panic in his chest and the ache in his knee subsided, and he could manage a small, steady nod — Okay. 

The first time he went down, actually hit the floor with a thud in the middle of a set, Iwaizumi was there, looping an arm around his waist and squeezing his side in silent reassurance. “What if—“ Oikawa had started to say, in the waiting room at the clinic, and Iwaizumi shook his head once, as if he could foreclose the possibility by sheer force of will alone.

He spent nights after PT on the phone with Iwaizumi, making him describe each practice Oikawa missed in excruciating detail. Iwaizumi had that shitty Motorola flip phone back then, which he’d _dropped in the ocean_ the summer before, so Oikawa could only hear about 75% of what he was saying. Oikawa remembers whining a lot about how Iwaizumi’s commitment to this haggard, technologically inept old man persona was going to cost them nationals. He remembers Iwaizumi telling him to shut up a lot, too.

Still, on the worst nights he used to set his phone on the pillow next to him and fall asleep to the sound Iwaizumi’s voice — even warbled through the ocean phone speaker, he couldn't help but be comforted by its familiar rhythm.

* * *

They go to the beach. 

It’s a ten minute walk from Oikawa’s apartment. Iwaizumi cuts some guava to take with them and packages up a pastry he bought at the Panaderia up the street. He gives Oikawa a piggyback ride down the stairs and Oikawa uses his ears to steer.

Oikawa is quiet as Iwaizumi lets him down on the street, then helps tuck a crutch under his arm. 

“Stop working out so much.” His eyes scan interestedly over the veins in Iwaizumi’s forearms. “You look like a bulldozer.”

“Some people like that.”

Oikawa raises an eyebrow.

Iwaizumi blushes. “Shut up.”

They lapse into a comfortable silence again, and Oikawa realizes that this — _this_ is exactly what he has been craving. Quiet, but not loneliness. Company without expectation. Even several thousand miles apart, that’s something only Iwaizumi can give him.

“Takeru got a girlfriend,” Oikawa says, as Iwaizumi helps him settle down against the blanket he laid out. The sand squishes and shifts beneath him. 

“Shit,” Iwaizumi laughs. He sits close, their arms lined up and pressed together. “How’d he swing that?”

Oikawa’s mouth tips in a dry smile. “She was impressed with his volleyball skills.”

“Yeah?”

“She wrote him a very cute confession.”

Iwaizumi nudges his shoulder against Oikawa’s. “He let you read it?”

Oikawa shakes his head. “Mom told me about it over the phone.” That had been last week, in the thick of his and Iwaizumi’s fight. The reminder is sobering, but only for a moment.

“You used to write me love notes,” Iwaizumi says.

Oikawa smiles down at the sand. “I did.”

“Fucking MacGyver-ed the shit out of them, though. I could never figure out how to unfold them.”

He tilts his head against Iwaizumi’s shoulder. “That’s because you’re a big, dumb brute.”

“Reciting one from memory?”

“I guess you’ll never know.”

After another moment's pause, Iwaizumi reaches into the back pocket of his shorts and digs out his horrific velcro wallet. (Oikawa has been begging him to replace it for years to no avail.) He opens it with an obnoxiously loud sound and then, from behind his passport, he supplies a small, folded piece of notebook paper. It’s considerably faded, but Oikawa still recognizes the hearts dotted around the creased edges, neatly drawn in purple ink.

“Iwa-chan,” he says softly, breath catching in his throat.

Iwaizumi pulls it open with impossibly gentle movements. “It’s a limerick about how my eyebrows look like angry caterpillars.”

Oikawa presses his quiet laugh against Iwaizumi’s shoulder.

“But you signed it ‘your Tooru,’ so I kept it.”

And brought it to Irvine, if he has it with him now. It’s daunting to think that Iwaizumi is in California living a whole life without him, but less so with the revelation that he carries a piece of Oikawa’s heart in his pocket everywhere he goes.

Oikawa lifts his head from Iwaizumi’s shoulder and leans in to brush a soft, open-mouthed kiss against his lips, which he’s not supposed to do anymore, but he maintains it’s Iwaizumi’s fault for being so dumb and sentimental and handsome. In any case, Iwaizumi cups Oikawa’s jaw and kisses him back, and his breath tastes like chocolate from the pastry they just shared, so at least they’re doing stupid things the way they do everything else — together.

Oikawa pulls back first, only to rest his forehead against Iwaizumi’s. “Am I still yours, Iwa-chan?” he asks, and it’s meant to sound teasing, but Iwaizumi has kissed him breathless. 

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi says flatly, with a careful brush of his thumb across Oikawa’s cheek. “You are.”

Oikawa hums in agreement, and moves to rest his head back against Iwaizumi’s shoulder. 

* * *

Oikawa kissed Iwaizumi for the first time when they were fourteen years old, after they had both received invitations to attend Aobajohsai High and play on their highly-ranked volleyball team. 

Oikawa had gotten his first, and, with his two most salient goals close enough to taste, he saw things more clearly than ever before. Ushiwaka would be defeated, and, when the time came, Tobio-chan, too. Soon enough, he would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Iwaizumi and the rest of his team at Nationals. And, as Captain, it _would_ be his team.

(There was a letter from Shiratorizawa under his bed, too. He never told Iwaizumi it was there, but he also never needed to say things aloud for Iwaizumi to know them.)

In any case, it hadn't mattered. Iwaizumi got his letter a couple days later, and came straight to Oikawa's house to tell him.

"Look!" Iwaizumi said, letting his bike fall onto the lawn and supplying a crumpled-up piece of paper from his pocket. His knee was bleeding, like he'd taken a spill halfway through the ride and kept on going. "It came!"

He had his excited frown on, so even though Oikawa could probably guess what the letter said, he took the wrinkled paper from Iwaizumi and read the first few lines anyway.

"So." He turned a triumphant smile at Iwaizumi. "Seijoh, then."

Iwaizumi nodded, looking just as proud. "Seijoh."

The kiss came later, after thoughts of glory and victory subsided, and Oikawa had taken hold of Iwaizumi's hand, led him inside, and forced him to sit down, so that he could gently wash the gravel out of the cuts on Iwaizumi's knee.

"It doesn't hurt that much," Iwaizumi said, blushing and needlessly defensive as Oikawa pasted bandaid after bandaid over the ruddy skin.

"Any more scabs and you'll start to look like Gojira-sama." 

"Shut up."

He grinned up at Iwaizumi and patted his knee. "All healed. Should I kiss it better, too?"

Iwaizumi, still red-faced and grouchy, pushed off the chair with as much dignity as he could muster. "I'd rather kiss Gojira-sama."

"For you, I'm sure we all come second to him,” Oikawa teased, standing up, too. “Pucker up, Iwa-chaaan~”

And Iwaizumi _did_. 

Kind of. He didn’t make a kissy face, or anything, but he squeezed his eyes shut tight and jutted his chin out a little, and, with that inexplicable blush still dusted over his cheeks, the intent was unmistakable.

So Oikawa got really close, like he’d been a hundred times before, under blanket forts and on volleyball courts and in the giant field of wildflowers behind Iwaizumi’s house, except this time he wasn’t doing it to make fun of Iwaizumi’s freckles or smear a streak of melted ice cream on his cheek. 

This time, Oikawa pressed their lips together in a blink-and-you-miss-it kiss, before jerking back with Best Setter speed, the tips of his ears burning. 

Iwaizumi brought a hand up to his lips. He was wearing a frown Oikawa had never seen before. “Was it supposed to be that fast?”

“Yes,” Oikawa said quickly, like he was a kissing expert. 

“Okay.” Iwaizumi still looked confused, but not any more angry than usual, so Oikawa figured everything was fine. “I have to get home. See you tomorrow?”

That had been it, for a while, until Seijoh won their first match with both Oikawa and Iwaizumi on the court, and Iwaizumi had stolen a kiss on their walk home, still riding a high from their win. Oikawa had refused to let him pull all the way back, and they had kissed for a long time, pressed against the back of Aobajohsai’s gymnasium with Iwaizumi’s hands fisted tight in Oikawa’s white and green jacket. 

(Those first few months in Argentina, Oikawa held close the memory of Iwaizumi's flushed skin and wide eyes, that silly, dumbfounded look, like he couldn't quite believe this was happening. Even if Iwaizumi was off in Irvine having all sorts of firsts with people Oikawa had never met, there were still parts of himself he could only ever share with Oikawa, and vice versa.)

They kissed whenever they wanted, after that — in locker rooms and empty classrooms, under the giant black pine at the end of Oikawa’s street, behind the closed and locked door of Iwaizumi’s bedroom. It became his third favorite thing to do with Iwaizumi, after playing volleyball and watching conspiracy theory documentaries. 

* * *

Still on this season’s training schedule, Oikawa blinks awake at six AM the next morning and lays very still in the warm circle of Iwaizumi's arms, listening to the trill of birds outside his window and the gentle hum of the ceiling fan. 

"Iwa-chan," he whispers, squirming around until he's on his side. "Hajime. Are you awake?"

Iwaizumi makes a light groaning sound that means _no_. Oikawa marvels at the fact that, even in his sleep, he manages to look grumpy.

Oikawa wriggles around some more and frees one arm, then pinches the soft skin at the base of Iwaizumi's neck. "How about now?"

Iwaizumi opens one eye to look at him. Oikawa loves Iwaizumi's eyes — a darker brown than his own, and the secret to knowing the difference between Iwaizumi's concerned frown, hungry frown, and Hey, It's Thursday frown.

"Stupidkawa," he mumbles, tapering off into a yawn. He closes his eyes again. "Tell the birds to fuck off."

Oikawa's mouth twitches into a smile. "Your pillow talk is so romantic, Iwa-chan."

Iwaizumi yawns again. "Go back to sleep."

Oikawa hesitates, then pinches Iwaizumi again. This time, both of his eyes open. 

"Concerned frown," Oikawa notes, lips still upturned. 

Iwaizumi looks at him for a moment that stretches long, reads something in his thin voice and the strained edge of his smile, and leans forward to steal a brief, closed-mouth kiss. "I'm getting up," he says, as if it was his decision to begin with, and proceeds to wage war against the convoluted tangle of Oikawa's sheets.

After sleepily groping Oikawa in the bathroom and carefully re-wrapping the ace bandage around his ankle, Iwaizumi plods slowly into the kitchen to make breakfast. Oikawa tries to help him, but gets a light shove and a scolding for his troubles. 

He makes natto and fried eggs with runny yolk, served over a bed of warm rice. Something twists in Oikawa's chest when he supplies the small styrofoam containers from his duffle, along with a small box of Oikawa’s favorite pre-packaged dessert from high school. 

"There's lots of Asian stores in Irvine," Iwaizumi shrugs, poking around his own breakfast with plastic chopsticks. Oikawa doesn't say anything back, just steals a bean out of his bowl.

It's exactly the kind of breakfast Iwaizumi's mother would have made for them when they were kids, on one of the many mornings after Oikawa spent the night at Iwaizumi's house. They would sit shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen counter, legs not yet long enough to reach the floor, and push around their food, prolonging the meal because they both knew that, at the end of it, Iwaizumi's mom would call Oikawa's mom to come take him home. 

"Let's live together when we grow up," Oikawa used to say, kicking Iwaizumi's chair. "Then I'll never have to go home."

Iwaizumi was not as good as Oikawa at rationing his breakfast. He would eat three fourths of it really, really quickly, then let the yolky rice at the bottom of the bowl go cold while gazing at it with a wistful expression. As wistful as an eight-year-old with a Godzilla band-aid pasted across the bridge of his nose could look, anyway. 

He'd only glance up to scowl meaningfully at Oikawa. "You'll get milk bread crumbs all over my sheets," he'd grouse, then blush, and look back at his breakfast. "But fine."

Oikawa is brought back to the present by another light shove at his shoulder, and grown-up Iwaizumi staring at him with a soft, contemplative frown. Grown-up Iwaizumi, who couldn't live farther away if he tried. 

"What's wrong?" he asks, in his dumb, gruff morning voice.

Oikawa pushes around the last clumps of rice at the bottom of his bowl. "Nothing," he says, looking up at Iwaizumi, the corners of his mouth quirked in a small, tired smile. "I just don't want you to go home." 

Iwaizumi's frown softens. He looks back at his bowl, but presses his knee against Oikawa's under the table.

* * *

Iwaizumi still has half a final to write and Oikawa is technically supposed to be on bed rest, so they spend most of the day on the couch. Oikawa stretches his legs over Iwaizumi's lap and Iwaizumi balances his laptop on Oikawa's shins, notes propped open over the arm of the sofa. It's a familiar scene.

Oikawa watches old game tapes of the next two teams they're up against. He takes notes that he can forward to their coach, catching individual players' weaknesses and every hole in their defense, no matter how slight. His team will probably throw out some cliché about the importance of bed rest and threaten to file a restraining order against him (again), but Oikawa's hard-earned prescience says they'll take his insights into account on the day-of anyway. 

Eventually the dull ache in his ankle becomes too much to properly focus, so he watches Iwaizumi instead. His face is screwed up in concentration as he types in aggressive, noisy strokes, only pausing to look something up in his notes or check the website with the English dictionary open. Every once in a while he'll try to dick around on the internet, then remember he has his website blocker on and make a low, irritated sound in the back of his throat. Oikawa finds this very amusing. 

Iwaizumi seems to get to a suitable stopping point and, after reading over his work one more time, he closes the document. Tilting his head back against the couch, he looks sidelong at Oikawa. "Enjoying my suffering?"

Oikawa's smile widens. "Trying to inspire you with my romantic gazing, actually!"

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, but squeezes Oikawa's knee. "How's the pain today?"

"Not bad," he says honestly, picking at a loose thread on his t-shirt. "More like discomfort than pain."

"Sucks."

"Yeah."

They talk about nothing for a couple hours, Iwaizumi's thumb running constant lines up Oikawa's calf. He eventually hefts Oikawa's legs out of his lap and declares he's making dinner, once again waving off Oikawa's attempts to help. 

Oikawa understands. Iwaizumi would rather book an international flight to cook Oikawa dinner than say I love you. It's part of the reason Oikawa loves him too.

Iwaizumi gives him a lecture about the dangers of mixing alcohol and Ibuprofen, but Oikawa hasn’t has any since the morning, and, alternatively, he couldn’t give less of a fuck. Thankfully he has gotten remarkably good at ignoring Iwaizumi’s lectures over the years — practically elevated it to a high art form. With a wholly unnecessary flourish, Oikawa uncorks a bottle of Malbec and fills two plastic souvenir cups to the brim.

The stools tucked against Oikawa’s counter aren’t particularly comfortable, so they gather the blankets and pillows from the living room and lay them out on the floor of the dingy kitchen. It reminds Oikawa of being little and building forts. He and Iwaizumi always fought too much over the fort design to be very good at it, but he still has fond memories of huddling together between the sweeps of fabric and trading secrets until one of them passed out.

“This is horrible,” Iwaizumi pulls a face, staring at the drink in his hand like it’s a personal affront. “You drink this? For taste?”

Oikawa presses a hand over his smile. “Yes, stupid. What do you drink?”

“Shots, mostly.” Iwaizumi takes another sip of wine and looks no less revolted. “Those are horrible, too, but it’s efficient.”

“You sound like such a party girl, Iwa-chan.”

“I don’t go out that often.”

Oikawa raises a skeptical eyebrow. 

“Two or three times a month, maybe,” Iwaizumi shrugs. “That’s all I can do, with a full course load and our practice schedule.”

Oikawa has only spoken to drunk Iwaizumi once, at three AM Iwaizumi’s time and seven AM his time. He had just gotten back from his morning run when his phone went off with a very urgent, very slurred request to remind Iwaizumi what their stupid matching Halloween costumes had been when they were ten — was that the year they did Star Wars, or Godzilla and Fire Fighter?

Oikawa had a hard time paying attention over the sound of Iwaizumi’s new friends laughing on the background of the call, and the petty, vicious jealousy it sent buzzing at his at his temples.

Two or three parties a month is still evidently enough to give Iwaizumi a higher alcohol tolerance than Oikawa. After polishing off half the bottle of wine, Oikawa is comfortably drunk while Iwaizumi seems merely tipsy.

“Say something nice about me,” Oikawa demands, placing his thumb against the edge of Iwaizumi’s caterpillar eyebrow.

Iwaizumi opens one eye, regarding him with dim interest. “You have really nice hair.”

Oikawa sticks his tongue out. “Something _nicer_.”

“You have a really nice jump serve.”

He drops a hand down, shoving lightly at Iwaizumi’s shoulder. “Irvine should give you a refund for that college writing class.”

Iwaizumi laughs a little, idly catching Oikawa’s fingers between his own. Oikawa smooths over the calluses on his palm and climbs into Iwaizumi’s lap, strong thighs bracketing him, and looks down at him with a satisfied smile. Iwaizumi is so handsome — Oikawa trails his fingers along the sunkissed skin around his collar and the fading bruise on his jaw, then traces the shape of the small smile quirking his lips.

“Drink more,” Oikawa instructs, reaching for the bottle and holding it in the narrow space between them.

And Iwaizumi does, because he has always had a pretty difficult time denying Oikawa anything. 

* * *

Three things set the stage for their fight. 

The first was a series of consecutively missed phone calls, most of which were planned, and one of which was made in the thick of Oikawa's attempted wrangling of his pre-game obsessive tendencies.

The second was a smaller scale argument over Iwaizumi's summer plans — he was deciding between a research assistant position and a funded fellowship with an athletic trainer's organization, or he _should_ have been deciding between those two things, but was instead contemplating bunking both of them to spend a month of the summer in Argentina, another month in Japan, and the last back in Irvine at some stupid academic excellence bootcamp that he didn't actually need. 

And it was true that they had been talking about the summer Argentina visit since Oikawa first moved, and Oikawa had underwent a moment of crushing disappointment at realizing Iwaizumi was fielding other opportunities, but that didn't make him any less of an idiot for even considering the prospect of blowing them off to dick around with his not-boyfriend for four weeks. 

The third is a quiet surge of jealousy that culminated with an incident over FaceTime, but had been realistically building for several weeks. Iwaizumi will semi-regularly mention the people he's closest to in California, enough that Oikawa knows their names — Linying, Jamal, Ana, Yuta. He has a particular distaste for Yuta, Irvine's setter, who Iwaizumi seems to like even though his awareness of the team's two tallest middle blockers is astoundingly bad. Yuta and Iwaizumi's other friends tag him in Instagram posts a few times a month, and some beautiful girl or boy always has an arm around his shoulder, their face frozen mid-laugh, like it didn't occur to them to find something funny until there was a camera pointed at their face. 

So after five missed calls, one of them had _finally_ managed to pick one up, and though the conversation was stilted and strange at first, around minute eleven they seemed to be edging towards something more normal — 

Until Yuta appeared over Iwaizumi's shoulder, his large palm resting idly at the juncture of Iwaizumi's neck.

"Oikawa?" Yuta had asked, lips quirked in a knowing smile. Very irritating, given that he didn't know anything. 

Iwaizumi nodded. Then, someone offscreen, a voice Oikawa didn't recognize, asked 'who's that?' and Iwaizumi said, 'an old friend, give me a few minutes?'

Old friend. Maybe it was a stupid, petty thing to get hung up on, but the words seemed to lance into Oikawa, to get stuck in his throat and defy all attempts at removal. As much as he'd grown since middle school, he still had a tendency to fixate, and this particular epithet crowded his senses and burned in his stomach with a kind of petty urgency that he thought he'd left back on the impeccable lines of Shiratorizawa’s court.

He had never been Iwaizumi's boyfriend. 

He had never needed to be. People knew that they belonged to each other — that even when Oikawa went on dates and smiled sweet thank yous to confession letters and got girlfriends for days or weeks at a time, he would always end up back at Iwaizumi's side, their hands brushing together on the way to class in a way that clearly wasn’t accidental. 

Naively, maybe, they hadn't even discussed it in the summer before Irvine and Buenos Aires, thinking that somehow, some way, that pulse of easy understanding that had always existed between them could survive countries of separation. 

With Yuta ruffling Iwaizumi's hair and Iwaizumi scratching idly at a bruise on his wrist, giving Oikawa a funny look through the webcam, Oikawa suddenly realized they’d been wrong. He had never in his _life_ wanted to be called someone's boyfriend until that moment, but one staticky FaceTime later, and the notion had burrowed its way completely under his skin.

He picked a fight a few days later. They were discussing what to do for Makki's birthday and Oikawa made some snide comment which quickly devolved into a fight about how Iwaizumi was forgetting his old friends, forgetting what they liked, forgetting what they meant to him. Oikawa hated how transparent he felt, with Iwaizumi's stony, appraising gaze pinning him in place through his computer screen. He spit something out about needing a break from each other, and hung up quickly. 

For the next thirteen days, he threw himself into his training regimen with an intensity Iwaizumi would have disapproved of, almost to spite him, so immovably certain that Iwaizumi would just know it was happening through their stupid psychic link, their famed preternatural connection, and break the silence just to scold him. 

On day fourteen, he rolled his ankle, and when he threw a frenzied look around the court, he was struck by the distinct lack of dark eyes staring back.

* * *

Later, after they finish the rest of the wine and fool around a little, Iwaizumi is on his knees at the end of the bed re-wrapping Oikawa's ankle again. He's looking at it the same way he looked at his essays — face screwed up in concentration, the tip of his tongue poking out from between his lips. Iwaizumi takes it so personally when Oikawa gets an injury, even now, even when he's not on the court to stop it from happening. 

And Oikawa loves him so much it _hurts_ , physically, like an ache in his chest and a breath stolen from the back of his throat and a hand that feels empty when he walks home from practice late at night. It seems cruelly unfair that there is only one thing in this life that he loves just a little bit more than Iwaizumi, and that is the thing that keeps them on different continents. 

Most days Oikawa is too caught up in the threads of his own ambition to feel sad about it, but it all rushes back to him in the moments like this, where life slows, loneliness a cresting wave that fills his lungs with water every single time.

Iwaizumi must mistake the look in his eyes for something else, because he's fixing Oikawa with the frown that means he either 1) forgot his lucky socks at home again 2) thinks Oikawa is melting down over losing time in his relentless quest for victory.

“It’ll be okay," he says. "It's not even a sprain, Trashkawa." He brushes a kiss against the inside of Oikawa’s ankle. The touch makes a memory surface, floating idly to the top of his mind like a balloon caught in an upward breeze—

Oikawa’s glittering eyes and soft, dangerous smile, peering at Iwaizumi from over the top of a textbook he undoubtedly had no intention of reading. “Let’s practice, Iwa-chan,” he’d say, sliding his fingers over the jut of Iwaizumi’s ankle. “Just pretend I’m a girl.”

“You’re too stupid to be a girl,” Iwaizumi would grumble.

Oikawa would pout, Iwaizumi would shove a hand in his face, and they’d wrestle until they ended up kissing anyway, without the pretense or condition of dates with girls — dates with anyone, really. 

“What’s up?” Iwaizumi asks him now, climbing back up the bed to settle heavily next to Oikawa. “You’re quiet.”

“I miss you,” Oikawa says quietly. He wants to reach for Iwaizumi’s hand but he’s too drunk and tired to remember how. Iwaizumi seems to read the absent twitch of his fingers and does the work for him, lining up their palms and twisting calloused fingers together. 

“I miss you, too,” Iwaizumi says.

They’re both stingy with those words, though lately it has felt like the subtext of every single one of their conversations. 

At first Iwaizumi’s absence had felt bizarre and jarring, like looking down halfway through the day and realizing you’d forgotten to put on pants in the morning. After a while, Oikawa began to settle into the grooves of it, to begin to comprehend the exact shape and size of the longing lodged between his ribs. Missing Iwaizumi became something Oikawa had to get used to, like everything else that seemed strange and foreign in Argentina. 

“Hey,” Iwaizumi says. He turns to look at Oikawa, eyes lidded and familiar. “Don’t think so hard. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Mmm.” Oikawa brushes the pad of his thumb along the inside of Iwaizumi’s forearm, where the skin is warm and smooth, like there’s sunlight trapped underneath. “You would take care of me, Iwa-chan.”

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi agrees quietly.

Oikawa presses his cheek into Iwaizumi’s shoulder. “Yeah.”

* * *

The next few days pass by fast, even as they have basically nothing to do but cook, have sex, and make lazy, go-nowhere conversation about the stupid things they can only discuss with each other, for fear of humiliation or judgment. (Iwaizumi teaches him that there are different settings on his laundry machine and he teaches Iwaizumi that if his earphones are being held together with masking tape, it's probably time to throw them out.)

At the end of the week, Oikawa stands outside of the apartment with Iwaizumi, looking over the rail and praying the cab gets held up another twenty minutes. He can feel the moments slipping through his fingers the same way they did in high school, his life suddenly a strange, ghostly inventory of lost games and broken hearts.

“I want to ask you to stay," Oikawa says. He has his fingers curled in the hem of Iwaizumi's t-shirt, like he used to when they were kids and he was dragging Iwaizumi into his nonsense of the day. 

"You won't," Iwaizumi flicks Oikawa's bangs into his eyes. 

Oikawa won't. Still.

"I wish you were mine," he sighs. He can only admit it now, too close to Iwaizumi's departure for there to be any real consequence, a strange mirror of the conversation they had on the beach, though the stakes are much higher.

Because Iwaizumi has dreams, too — he whispered them to Oikawa last night, both of them staving off sleep to steal a couple extra moments together. Oikawa already misses it, the solid warmth of Iwaizumi in his bed, an arm wrapped tight around his waist and the faint smell of Sandalwood hanging from the sheets, even though Iwaizumi wouldn't be Iwaizumi if he didn't have places to be, a steady ambition that knocked up against Oikawa's own every so often.

"Remember when you would climb trees and fall out of them just to catch my attention? I wish you still did that." Oikawa fidgets with the sleeve of Iwaizumi's sweatshirt. 

"I didn't fall _on purpose_."

"You only went so high when I was watching."

"I was just trying to get away from you." 

"Shut up," Oikawa laughs, leaning down to bite Iwaizumi's shoulder. "Don't be funny. It'll make me miss you more."

"I am yours," Iwaizumi says, sudden and stilted. The air around him seems to quiet, and Oikawa's world reduces to the jerky movement of his lips. He's frowning. It's an _I love you_ frown. "I can't believe you made me say that corny bullshit, but I am."

Oikawa’s smile softens. "Yeah?”

Iwaizumi steals another kiss, his thumb on the square of Oikawa’s jaw, a familiar, possessive touch that makes Oikawa melt.

“Yeah,” he reminds, flat, and tilts their foreheads together. 

Oikawa grins, and tugs Iwaizumi into another kiss, soundly ignoring the taxi that’s just pulled up a few moments longer.

And he thinks, later, sitting in an empty apartment and staring at an empty bottle of wine, that even as saying bye feels like dying now, maybe it doesn’t actually matter so much. They have time - miles of it behind them and miles of it ahead. 

Right now, his ankle’s hardly sore, there’s sunlight pouring through his open window, and Iwaizumi has texted him a fantastically hideous Selfie from the airport. 

There’s a lot to be thankful for. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks 4 reading im maangoes on tumblr too


End file.
